Yeah, for me even abstaining for a little bit would be good. Food and drink are pretty integral parts of my social life. I am an avid homebrewer (beer), certified beer judge, and I used to run a beer appreciation club back in the day. I even go “hashing” every now and then (Hash House Harriers, a drinking club with a running problem). My wife and I even plan our vacations around food and drink, too 
We’ll see how this goes in the long term 
Very cool! I’m part of my states craft beer club which gets me alot of great deals. I wish I could enjoy craft brews without the alcohol portion. I’m a big new england IPA fan. I live right by Kane brewery, and NutraBio actually shares a parking lot with Demented Brewing!
Had my first posing class today. I definitely felt awkward, but I’d imagine that’s how it is for everyone their first time. Several ladies were there practicing for their respective classes. Two other dudes were there, and they were going for physique; I was the only one prepping for body building. I got these sexy shorts for practice, lol. It was a lot to take in, so many things to think about! I learned that I’m really bad at flexing my lats, haha; so we will need to do some extra work on them.
After we reduced my calories to 2600 a couple weeks ago, my weight started to track down again, but quickly flattened out. Alex insisted that we “trust the system”, and not change anything just yet. Humph, I take that back. LOL, I just got a text from that we are increasing my cardio from 600 to 1000 calories per week 
I finished all of January without a drop of our favorite social lubricant. Had 9 oz of wine on Friday and a little bit of Scotch. FYI, if you are a wine fan, DO NOT TRY VINEBOX, it is pure garbage. My sister gave me a 3-month subscription for Christmas. They send out 3 3 oz samples of different wines for you to taste every month, and it ain’t cheap. The wine was shit, and my wife priced them online at ~$10/bottle. Not worth it.
As for my “dry January” or whatever they call it, I am very disappointed. Folks talk about the immediate effects:
I felt no improvement an any of those. Oh well. Nonetheless, I reflect on it as an opportunity to improve my relationship with booze. Plus, my new policy until the competition is no drinking on “school nights” 
(beer and cocktails are completely off limits until the competition, too)
I just finished trying out SAMe for 30 days to help with stress and anxiety. I took Now Foods brand, 400 mg 2x/day. I did not notice any improvement. I have been off it for 5 days now, and I have been in the shittiest mood for the past 3 days. I do not know if it is related going off the SAMe or not. I don’t have patience for anyone’s crap, everything pisses me off right now. Sunday update, feeling much better today, only in a mildly shitty mood today, lol. I’ll make a separate thread under supplements/nootropics about this to avoid derailing the log too much
No Update. I want to drop below 190 before getting another blood test.
Still looking good, trending down week-over-week. The past few days have been spiking up a bit, particularly in the mornings, may be related to the whole shitty mood thing.
Amlodipine Besylate 10 mg
You can see that I leveled off again. So we are adding another 400 calories of cardio to my weekly regimen.
| Starting Weight | Current Weight | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 207 | 196.6 | 10.4 |
2600 is really no big deal. I’m a little hungry between lunch and dinner, but I got a good snack regimen planned out. Definitely increasing my veggies to help fill me up.
Calories: 2575
| Macro | Percent | Grams |
|---|---|---|
| Protein | 28.74% | 185 g |
| Carbs | 31.07% | 200 g |
| Fat | 40.19% | 115 g |
This will be my last week on this mesocycle. I haven’t received info just yet on what’s next.
6-week mesocycle that contains two 3-week microcycles, each containing 4 workouts per week. Focus is on hypertrophy. For cardio: three of the four sessions per week contain ~10 minutes of work capacity at the end of the session. In addition, I am doing 2x300 calorie cardio sessions per week.
Quick update. It’s been 3 weeks. I was going to post last weekend, but my damn trainer didn’t get my pics from posing class until mid-week.
tl;dr…
Detailed update this weekend!
That was FTA that closed? What are the guys gonna do? Isn’t that where they’ve been filming most of their stuff?
Anytime Fitness in Pflugerville. It’s sadly a bit smaller than FTA, and the trainers alone are bringing about 100 members over. Gonna get crowded. And it’s a very different crowd/culture at the new gym…but they are gonna have to get used to us! 
However, the owners of this Anytime are excited to have us. Some equipment, including at least one platform, are being brought over from FTA. With the increase in membership, the owner is about ready to break down the wall and expand the gym, too.
Okay, time to stop procrastinating…Today my trainer wants me to shave…everything. Then I’ll post a new log here if I survive. 
Had my second posing class last weekend. Getting a little better at it. The previous class, I was having a hell of a time getting my lats to pop. I managed to find them this time ! This class, we focused only on the turns and “relaxed” positions. We have to find more time to start working on all the other poses.
For my next class, my trainer wants me all shaved up. So this morning was my first attempt at it. Total time, including trimming and shaving, was about 2 and a quarter hours. Wifey helped with my hard-to-reach areas, while repeatedly saying thing like, “I can’t believe you are doing this”, and “this is too much work”, etc… haha.
For trimming, I just used my beard trimmer. I managed to finish that on a single charge. My trainer recommended the Schick Intuition ladies razor for shaving. It worked great! Actually, the whole shaving experience wasn’t bad at all. The legs went really quick. My belly and chest were the hardest to shave for whatever reason. Nonetheless, no pain or cuts. We’ll see how I feel once it starts growing back. Clothes feel weird now that I’m shaved, especially on the legs. Even running water on my hands and arms feels weird, lol!
Alex cut my calories again about a week and a half ago, from 2575 to 2215, all from fat. This was a bit tough at first, as I naturally prefer fat over carbs. It took a bit of food tweaking to get things on track. I was pretty hungry at first, but I adapted pretty quickly.
To make things easier for the wife, my weekday lunch is now “bro diet” of 5 oz shredded poached chicken breast, 1 cup chicken broth, 3/4 cup brown rice, and a cup of some veg. This now makes my breakfast, lunch, and snacks on weekdays perfectly consistent, making dinner planning much easier for wifey. Fortunately, I love chicken and rice; so I’m cool with it
Calories: 2215
| Macro | Percent | Grams |
|---|---|---|
| Protein | 33.4% | 185 g |
| Carbs | 36.1% | 200 g |
| Fat | 30.5% | 75 g |
My trainer only created a 3-week cycle since we knew FTA Gym was shutting down, and we didn’t know where we were going next. This has 5 days per week (push, pull, legs, upper, lower) with work capacity on 3 of the days. I start week 3 tomorrow.
We have since moved to Anytime Fitness in Pflugerville. It’s a bit smaller than FTA, and the trainers alone are bringing about 100 members over. Gonna get crowded. And it’s a very different crowd/culture at the new gym…but they are gonna have to get used to us ! However, the owners of this Anytime are excited to have us. Some equipment, including at least one platform, are being brought over from FTA. With the increase in membership, the owner is about ready to break down the wall and expand the gym, too.
Alex also increased my cardio to 1000 calories per week. I was doing most of my cardio running with my pooch, but I had an altercation with a thug on my neighborhood trail two weekends ago; so now I mostly do cardio at the gym after my workout. I loathe stationary cardio; so to maintain my sanity, I split my cardio session between the rower and treadmill (150 cal each).
I got sick (again??? wtf???), and my weight plummeted to 192 quickly. I knew this wasn’t real fat loss. The downward spike made tracking weight loss versus caloric intake a bit difficult. Things stabilized, and my weight is back to trending down. Getting close to 190!
| Starting Weight | Current Weight | Delta |
|---|---|---|
| 207 | 191.2 | 15.8 |
Blood pressure is trending back up. I noticed it started to tick up a few days before I finished my “dry January”. So I’m not confident the upward trend is directly caused by drinking 2-3x/week.
Amlodipine Besylate 10 mg
No Update. I want to drop below 190 before getting another blood test.
WOW epic post!!! Interesting that skipping the booze didn’t help BP, but it probably helped with the weight, given late night calories go away and you get a deeper fast going (hopefully!)
LOL been a while since I’ve shaved the legs (competitive swimmer, clam it!). You wear jeans afterwards? It does feel kinda crazy awesome.
Hope the new gym works out well!
Haha, yeah, alcohol is a weird one.
I did some reading on alcohol and caloric intake a while back, and there is a ton of conflicting information out there. I’m in the camp that you’d count alcohol calories the same way you’d count calories from tree bark or gun powder. Yeah, if you incinerate them in a bomb calorimeter, you’ll definitely get calories. However that’s not how the body processes them. Plus alcohol is a toxin, and the body actually has to burn calories to process the toxin. If alcohol is eventually processed into usable energy (still debated), then there’s another debate on how many calories the body burns processing the alcohol (I read one place suggested it cost 75 calories to process 100 cal of alcohol).
What we all know, of course, are the common sense facts. Alcohol makes one more inhibited, which could lead to impulse eating. Beer, cocktails, and some wines are loaded with calories outside of the alcohol, which can add up quickly. Alcohol hurts sleep patterns, and poor sleep has been linked to weight gain. And obviously, if you have less energy when you hit the gym, you aren’t going to get as intense of a work out.
Everything in moderation! I do intend to go completely dry again at least 2 months out.
Oh my god, it feels so weird! And this morning I put on compression shorts, and it was like putting on Velcro! rofl
This is my first posing class after shaving; so I figured I’d share some pics. I’m still trying to get the hang of the poses. There is a LOT to think about, but I’ll get there! We will practice posing weekly instead of biweekly now; so we can focus more on my mandatories.
Nice pictures, the compression pants make it look like you Photoshopped your top half on to your bottom half, but you look like you will shape up rather well
Random question but have you measured your resting heart rate?
Thanks! I still have another 20 lb to go.
Yeah, twice daily when I check my BP, but I don’t log it. On weekdays when I first wake up it’s around 56. Evenings aren’t accurate because I measure it about an hour after the gym. Yesterday was a rest day, and my afternoon BP was 56, which I found surprising. Normally during the day it’s in the 70’s.
Dude it’s happening! Good pics!!!
I say screw it though and come out with chest hair 
That’s a bad idea. My first posing class I was unshaved. Someone called animal control and they took me out with tranq darts 
So after you’re done with your passion flower, I have something else for you to try: CBD Oil. Only used it three times but the stuff knocks me down a level without a doubt. @customshopkv1 may be able to get you a sampler bottle.
I’ve been wanting to try that for a while! You must have gotten it out of state.
Once i’m done with my show in June, I’m down!
It’s been a few weeks since my last update. My trainer and I have been monitoring my progress closely, and we concluded that I am not going to be ready for the June show at this rate. So we are going to up my game…
Damn, hard stuff. How much you taking per day?
Uhm…about a barn-megaparsec per day, I guess? 
